to a slightly overweight Sikh boy growing up in Glasgow in the seventies was more than a little perplexing.
‘What are we then, Dad, if we’re not Indian?’ I was compelled to ask.
He waited a moment, his face as stern and handsome as ever. ‘We, son, are the descendents of the Aryan people. Our ancestors trekked from Middle Europe across the Russian Steppes through Persia and ultimately into northern India.’
This was amazing. We were white people. We weren’t really Indian after all. I couldn’t wait to get back to the playground and explain this; perhaps then they would stop calling me names.
‘Our ancestors ultimately settled in and around modern-day Punjab. And if you have ever been to the Punjab you would soon realise that it’s a great place to stop.’
Dad had laughed that rarest of laughs. He clearly loved the Punjab.
‘That’s how the Aryan race ended up in the Punjab.’
And I distinctly remember telling kids in the playground that I was part of the Aryan race. It was the late seventies and the National Front was on the march. Little did I realise that a brown-skinned fat kid from Glasgow telling everyone that he was somehow linked to the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany had consequences. That is where my confusion over my identity must have begun…
‘Kovalam, son,’ repeated my dad, fast-forwarding me thirty years back into the present. ‘Start in Kovalam. They weren’t stupid those Portuguese.’
I had never suggested that they were … The Portuguese had colonised tracts of southern India, taking chillies and vinegar to the Indians.
‘… and sign those documents. But start in Kovalam … ’
Kovalam is about as far away from my ‘home’ in India as I can possibly get. The Punjab is the most northerly point in India and if Kovalam were any further south it would be in the sea. Apart from the fact that the weather is discernibly warmer and consequently the scenery is different, I wasn’t altogether sure what to expect, but it seemed logical to start in a place unlike the India I knew and recognised. (When I was a very young kid I thought India was full of Punjabis.)
‘You really ought to go to Pondicherry, son. The French influence on India is crucially important to the geo-politics of the age.’ I had never heard my dad use the word ‘geo-politics’.
‘It’s too close to Trivandrum, not different enough,’ I argued.
‘Then?’
‘Madras,’ I suggested. Chennai as it is now called. The big fella needed convincing.
Madras is India’s fourth largest city and is the capital city of the state of Tamil Nadu, a state rich with ancient history and culture. This seems to jar more than a little with the connotations of the word ‘Madras’ in Britain. As far as most of our population is concerned, Madras is a curry that is hotter than a creamy Korma, but less virulent than a Vindaloo. It’s quite amazing how millennia of history can be summed up on a spiceometer. For me, Madras would be the sole representative for the east coast of India.
‘After Madras?’ He was keen for me to venture further north up that coast. He and I had always planned a trip to Assam and Darjeeling. He loves his tea, and I could think of few things more rewarding than having a cup or two with him in the heart of tea-growing India. But I wasn’t going to Assam or Darjeeling on this trip; nor was I going with him.
‘Too far north-east, Dad’, I explained. ‘I need to come inland’.
‘Bangalore?’ he asked.
‘Eventually,’ I replied.
From Madras and its mild curries I would venture west to Mysore. My father-in-law went to medical college in Mysore, and it is famed for its Sandalwood soap, a fragrance that instantly transports me to India. A few months before I’d met an American Filipino hippy type who had started a yoga school in Mysore. We had exchanged email addresses and it seemed daft not to explore the place whilst combining it with a gentle stretch.
‘Then Bangalore?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. Dad was happy; he liked Bangalore.
Bangalore is the epitome of everything modern India wishes to be, a microcosm of the unfolding second millennium. Bangalore is famous for many things: it is the centre of India’s technology revolution and it is also Geoffrey Boycott’s favourite Indian city. For me it will always be the city of my wife’s family, a place of great parties, weddings and much fun. A city run by urban sophisticates.
‘You have to go to Goa, son.’
At this point I was beginning to wonder who was making this journey. But I did have to go to Goa.
‘For many Westerners it was their primary source of knowledge of the Indian subcontinent.’ My dad was on fire with insight.
Goa. It would be churlish not to go and find myself in the same place so many others attempted self-discovery. And it would be nice to spend a little time on a beach in India; although the idea of brown-skinned people on a beach still strikes me as wholly incongruous.
‘And after Goa?’
‘Bombay, Dad.’ Dad liked Bombay, too, and I think it is my favourite city in the world.
Is there a more vibrant and exciting place on the planet? I doubt it. As well as being home to the world’s largest film industry, Bombay is the most cosmopolitan of all Indian cities, drawing every sort of Indian into its ample and warm bosom. I love Bombay.
‘You have to spend some time with Manore Uncle in Delhi. Rovi will look after you. Send him an email. Wait, I’ll call him now on the other line … ’
My dad was bad enough with one phone; the free market and subsequent deregulation of the telecommunications business meant that he now had a mobile and two landlines in the house; he was able to sort my entire itinerary out singlehandedly. Manore Uncle is my dad’s best friend and they are like family to us. In many ways they are closer than family. Rovi is Manore Uncle’s second son and an all-round angel. They make Delhi feel like home to us. We would always fly into Delhi, staying for a day or two before going to the Punjab. I have strong childhood memories of the city and it has become a de facto annexe of the Punjab, so full is it of my north Indian brethren.
‘There’s a place called McLeod Gunj where they have some Scottish missionaries… ’
The big fella is off on one. He spent some time in Leh on a walking pilgrimage. He loves walking. Walking and tea; he’s some man. The pilgrimage involved a high-altitude walk across a tiny path in the foothills of the Himalayas. He was keen for me to visit there. I, too, was keen to be in Kashmir but I explained to him that I couldn’t risk travelling to remote places and getting stranded. We are talking about the Himalayas here. Snowfall, mudslides and general meteorological mayhem. It was simply too risky. Instead I would head for Srinagar in the Kashmir Valley.
‘Good,’ he said approvingly.
The Kashmir Valley: one of the most beautiful places on earth and a place my father spoke about often when we were kids. I spent a summer there once when my aunt and her husband, a colonel in the army, were stationed there. My aunt
